Very Literary: A community blog

Writer's Retreat

The heat is unbreathable and my internet connection is a tease - for the past month I have yielded to both, but I have not been totally incapacitated. While I regain my bearings and get ready to post the second part of my treatise on chapbooks, I have news to announce!

This Sunday, July 8th, I'll be reading at the Moonstone Arts Center in Philadelphia - 110 S 13th Street - as part of the Jubilant Thicket Literary Series. I have a lot to celebrate at my first public reading: this year I have three chapbooks coming out. In addition to Say you're a fiction, a series of poems coming soon from Kristy Bowen's Dancing Girl Press, this week sees the release of the Black Telephone, an essay by me and release number four in Kristen Stone's Unthinkable Creatures chapbook series!

The third is a dynamite secret about which I am totally exploding. I should be able to unveil everything by end of the summer, when I read at the Midtown Scholar on August 25th! Those readers who have never had the pleasure of handling a chapbook will get to do so then. I warn you that it isn't an experience for the faint of heart: the glitter content might push you over the edge.

After Jubilant Thicket next Sunday and armed with an oscillating fan, Very Literary will resume as usual. In the meantime, check out the New Inquiry - whose sixth issue, "Attack of the Drones," launches this week! Ilk journal is now reading submissions for its fifth issue to feature exclusively women. And, speaking of which, Jezebel recently corralled twenty-five kick-ass and amazing women including the incomparable Kate Zambreno and Sheila Heti. Careful not to damage a copy of Green Girl under the fireworks!